Amazon SearchBox

Our Readers Rock!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Even before Connor was born I've held it close to my heart that my children would be exposed to as many cultures as possible. So many people in my family have lived such a sheltered life not to mention rarely even leaving town much less traveling around the country and forget traveling around the world. For better or worst when I grew up we moved almost every year and though its not a lifestyle I highly recommend for people it did afford me a big luxury of experiencing the world the way most kids do not get to and seeing many different types of people. In my early 20s I was lucky enough to travel even more for my job and even to Europe a few times.

This is something I really want to share with Connor but without the moving bits and I can't say that my budget will allow me many trips around the world so I have to be a bit more creative about how I bring outside culture in. Though I hope to be able to show Connor all the places in the US I've seen and more that I have not trips to far away places may have to wait. In the meantime I have to rely on other ways to bring the outside world in. Walker and Ping Ping is exactly the sort of thing I have begun to rely on.

Walker is a American kid in Hong Kong and his friend Ping Ping is his guide teaching him all about Hong Kong and Chinese culture. Ping Ping's native language is Mandarin and along the way we learn a bit about that as well. Ping Ping is a kid friendly way for children to get their first experiences with Chinese culture and maybe even pick up a few worlds of Mandarin. As a kid the Chinese culture is the one that most intrigued me it seems so mysterious, so far away, but as I've gotten older I've realized that Chinese, European, Canadian, or American kids are still the same across all cultures and as adults it seems so much harder to connect with what we don't know but as kids its so much simpler.